Focus on Cancer of Walla Walla will present a fundraiser and auction to benefit Team Julianna at Gesa Power House Theatre on Saturday, March for at 6:00 p.m. Activities will include music by Frog Hollow Band, live and silent auctions, and local wine.

Former New York actor/director, and star of The Last Five Years will teach a workshop on Sunday, March 5, from 2 to 6 p.m. on the elements of live performance and creating original theater.

Actor-students will participate in group exercises highlighting aspects of storytelling through performance. They will then use what they have learned to workshop and create dynamic pieces of live theater. Friends and family are invited to attend a final working performance in the last hour of the workshop.

Admission to the workshop is free with proof of purchase of a ticket to see "The Last Five Years" ($20 without). Actors of all ages (minimum age 12) are welcome.

Youth entrepreneurship is what this event is all about - and this year there is a lot on the line: $10,000!

Preliminary workshops and events lead up to the final event held at Gesa Power House Theatre on Tuesday, March 7 from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. High school and college participants will pitch their business ideas to a panel of six judges. Students will be given three minutes to present their pitch and five minutes for Q&A by the panel. Upon deliberation, the judges will distribute the cash award (from a potential pool of $10,000) at their discretion in an awards ceremony. The K-8 winner from the February 23 competition will also be awarded their cash prize. Food & beverages will be served.

This series of events has been a four-year creation to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week. Global Entrepreneurship Week is the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.

​Inspired by the TV show Shark Tank, students take an idea, create a business plan, consider the financial viability of their business and pitch their idea to a panel of judges. Local Walla Walla business leaders contribute as mentors, coaches and judges.

A&N Productions presents: Shelby Earl Album Release with Planes on Paper on Saturday, March 11 at 7:00 p.m. at Gesa Power House Theatre. This event (21+ only) is sponsored by Walla Walla Cannabis Company.

Shelby Earl’s first two albums earned the kind of raves any musician would kill for. Upon hearing her 2011 debut, Burn the Boats, NPR’s Ann Powers called Earl her “new favorite songwriter,” and she wasn’t alone. Accolades followed from Rolling Stone to the Wall Street Journal and a million music sites in between that positioned her somewhere to the left of Neko Case, a few blocks from Sharon Van Etten, catercorner to Angel Olsen. She toured everywhere, playing with the likes of Loudon Wainwright, Rhett Miller, and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, who spoke for many people when he said Earl had “the most heartbreakingly beautiful voice in Seattle.”

Two years later, she followed up with the equally powerful Swift Arrows, and returned to the touring trenches, startling audiences around the world with songs that laid bare an inner landscape full of darkness and loss, as well as the defiant resolution not to be consumed by them. Both records are gorgeous, painstakingly crafted, and, not to put too fine a point on anything, full of heavy emotional weather. (Not for nothing did Powers observe that Earl’s writes “for those of us who have been through a few things.”)

But take a minute to consider what it means to have been through a few things. It suggests reaching the other side. Eight years after burning her (figurative) boats to pursue life as a professional musician, quitting her job, and forging a career, Shelby Earl found that her inspiration was leading away from the darkness and anger she so fruitfully explored on those first two LPs and toward the light that would yield her third, and most accomplished record to date.

That light shines through every facet of the album, from the songwriting, whose thematic concerns turn away from savage self-exploration and toward coruscating character studies, ballads, and swooning pop gems. The new songs retain her gift for a dark lyrical turn, but locate the telltale images in the context of other people.

Once producer Martin Feveyear (Mark Lanegan, Brandi Carlisle, Eric Bachmann) came on board, and the whole team entered the studio, the process took flight. It wasn’t a question of “going pop,” incorporating more danceable beats, or mobilizing the vogue for vintage keyboard soul—though both of those aesthetics lurk at the edge of the frame throughout. No, it was something much simpler: The Man Who Made Himself a Name is the sound of an artist who, having lived and chronicled some catastrophically hard times, found herself on the other side feeling happier, healthier, healed—and making music that sounded like it.

There is a vocal synergy that exists between Navid Eliot and Jen Borst, the two core members of the Washington-based folk group Planes on Paper. They each have clear, unique voices, but when combined, a special kind of musical beauty emerges.

"In a modern age where indie folk groups with male/female harmonies are as common as a Starbucks on every corner, Planes on Paper offer an organic alternative, refreshing in its artistry." - The Revue

Reserved Seating Tickets: $15
VIP Tables (includes on stage seating and wine for 4 people): $80

This event is restricted to 21 and older (ID required).

Gesa Power House Theatre will screen the current Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of "The Tempest" on Wednesday, April 22 at 6:00 p.m.

"The Tempest" is brought to life on the RSC stage in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios, featuring some of today's most advanced technology in a bold re-imagining of Shakespeare's magical play, and starring Simon Russell Beale. The production was filmed live in Stratford-Upon-Avon and rebroadcast internationally to select screens.

On a distant island a man waits.

Robbed of his position, power and wealth, his enemies have left him in isolation. But this is no ordinary man, and this no ordinary island. Prospero is a magician, able to control the very elements and bend nature to his will. When a sail appears on the horizon, he reaches out across the ocean to the ship that carries the men who wronged him. Creating a vast magical storm he wrecks the ship and washes his enemies up on the shore. When they wake they find themselves lost on a fantastical island where nothing is as it seems.

Simon Russell Beale returns to the RSC after 20 years to play Prospero in a production directed by Artistic Director Gregory Doran.

Stay tuned for additional details regarding the annual fundraiser to benefit Danza Classica Ballet.

Gesa Power House Theatre presents the Walla Walla premiere of "SEED: The Untold Story" on Wednesday, March 29, at 7:00 p.m. The film's co-director and co-producer Jon Betz, a Walla Walla native, will attend the screening and participate in a talkback session afterwards.

Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. Worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. "SEED: The Untold Story" follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. As biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a David and Goliath battle to defend the future of our food. In a harrowing and heartening story, these reluctant heroes rekindle a lost connection to our most treasured resource and revive a culture connected to seeds. The film features Vandana Shiva, Dr. Jane Goodall, Andrew Kimbrell, Winona Laduke and Raj Patel.